Pub Night Dallas

new location: Union Bear!!!!

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:12:49 -0400

Starting next Tuesday (3/20), Pub Night Dallas will be relocating to Union Bear in West Village. It’s right next to Taco Diner.

Once you enter the restaurant, go down the stairs and take a right. Go past the kitchen counter and all the way to the back. We’ll be meeting at 8:00 as usual.

Let others know! See you next week!

Os Guinness @ 303 Bar & Grill March 1st

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:38:26 -0500

“Come enjoy a pint with us while we explore the question “If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world?” with world-renown speaker and author Os Guiness.
The great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, Os is one of the world’s top thinkers on the topic and is, himself, no stranger to the experience of suffering. It promises to be an evening of both deep intellectual exploration as well as sensitive recognition of one of the most important issues of our times.

All questions welcome, all voices heard.

Food will be provided (drinks are on you).”

Seems to me (Petey) like something Pub Nighters would enjoy…

The Kingdom Comes: The Victory of God

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:47:24 -0500

It started with a Villain. Well, it didn’t actually begin, in the beginning, with a Villain. It began with a different vision altogether. But that vision has been co-opted, and now we’re left with a different story.

And that story starts with a Villain. A wicked tyrant, a slave-master, an Accuser.

He is the one who stands before God and cries “corrupt! deceitful! selfish! They don’t worship you, God, they worship themselves!”

The human race is, in fact, guilty. And the Accuser, the villain, knows this all too well. He knows it both because he is the instigator of the self-subjected idolatry and he’s the one who daily finds multiple ways to make us feel uncomfortable about it.

We were made for something (God’s glory), and we are not that something (we are broken, sinful reflections of that glory), and we feel the weight of the distance between the two hanging around our necks like an impossibly heavy millstone.

Now, understand that God had made two intertwining claims throughout history. The first was that he would do something to roll back the disease—the decay that was separating us from him and his Glory. The second was that, ultimately, this was something only God could do himself.

Enter the Chosen One.

Jesus shows up, using ancient Israelite language to claim that God is indeed becoming King, that he is reigning. That he has power that is deeper, wider, and better than anything else the creation has managed to conjure up.

And, stunningly, Jesus declared that this reign was happening in and through his very life.

He starts by taking all of the steps to becoming the theoretical “king of the Jews”—he claimed royal (from the family of David) blood lines, went through suffering and trial to re-engage the history of the Israelites so that he was an accurate representation of them, and took on the enigmatic titles “son of man” and “son of God” that were both Old Testament references who indicated a chosen, Kingly figure. Why is it important that Jesus became King?

Because the life of the nation was summed up in the life of the King. The one stood for the many. And Jesus doesn’t just do this for Israel, but he does it for all of humanity.

Jesus believed that he was doing, through his life, death, and resurrection, for Israel and the world, what he believed only God himself could do.

He couldn’t launch God’s kingdom of justice, truth, and peace unless injustice, lies, and violence did their worst, exhausting their power on one spot, the Cross. The work of healing the world would prove fruitless unless he provides the antidote to the infection that would otherwise destroy the project from within.

Though we have declared the right to rule ourselves, to be our own kings, Jesus lovingly came to reveal a better King. A better Kingdom. He allowed the Kingdoms of the world to do their worst and it wasn’t enough.

We, self-governed, were tyrannized by death, fear, and destruction.

And in his Victory, the the Victory of God over evil and Jesus over Satan, he declares that God is here. That he is powerful. That he is the true King.

He has put the Kingdoms of the world on trial and they’ve been found wanting.

God has declared the Victory, in Jesus. We can trust that he is powerful and sufficient and that all of the powers of death, destruction, and decay have no more power of us. We are set free from the fear of death, set free to live to and for the Glory of God.

The Kingdom Comes: The Chosen Leader (2/7)

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:08:52 -0500

The Kingdom of God was nothing less than an affront to the kingdoms, powers, and Kings/leaders of the world. It was a revolution, an overthrow of the reign-of-evil and inauguration of the reign-of-Jesus.

And if you’re going to have a revolution, you’re going to need a leader.

Someone who has…

Power: Jesus has a divine relationship with God. He is empowered by the Spirit.

Purpose: Jesus had a task to perform, a vision of his function. He identifies with his people to lead them through death to a new life.

Character: Jesus embodied God’s character and experienced God’s love, mercy, protection & gifts. He is the very righteousness of God on display for the world to see.

Jesus is the Chosen Leader to lead the revolution of the Kingdom of God. And the leader sets the tone for all the questions we struggle with in our faith. Questions like:

-What should we believe?
-What’s our purpose?
-What should we value/ hold most dear?
-How should we live?
-What should we do?

The leader, Jesus, sums up these questions and their answers in his very life, death, and resurrection.
The leader answers both questions of deep purpose & meaning AND practical living.
Who to be and how to act.
He identifies with the people and beckons them to a new way of living. He says “Come into my life. Give up yours, take mine upon you.”
He has belief enough for us,
forgiveness enough for us,
and he pulls us into the vortex of his power, purpose and character.

The Kingdom finds its power in people who take up the path of the Chosen Leader. They live for what he lived for, are about what he was about, and do what he did.

That’s when the revolution comes. And make no mistake, it’s a revolution of hearts. The author of Hebrews sums up well the unexpected revolution of the Kingdom:

For he finds fault with them when he says:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah,

not like the covenant that I made with their fathers

on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

For they did not continue in my covenant,

and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws into their minds,

and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor

and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

for they shall all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,

and I will remember their sins no more.”

(Hebrews 8:8-12 ESV)

Jesus is the savior. All of these other things won’t save you.

Jesus is the LEADER. All of these other things won’t LEAD you.

What we let lead us, who we let lead us, defines what we trust in for our salvation. Let the one who brings the Kingdom of God be your leader.

The Kingdom Comes: The Wicked Tyrant (1/7)

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:44:51 -0500

When we are trying to understand the Kingdom of God and it’s power in our world, perhaps a good place to start is with something that’s often overlooked: the Wicked Tyrant.

There is an anti-King, one who desires the exact opposite of Jesus, the true King. Perhaps the most common word we can call him from Scripture is “Satan,” or “the accuser” or “the adversary.”

And while I could write all day about the theology behind this issue, I’d rather just let you consider a couple of things.

The great Wicked Tyrant of the world, the one who wants to enslave us in our own sin & selfishness, wants one thing: to separate us from God.

-He wants to put distance between us and God, indeed the truth and beauty and goodness of God. He wants us to be distant from God so that we doubt, stop believing and trusting, and consider other things true enough and good enough and beautiful enough.

-He wants to expose the separation. The tyrant, the adversary, wants the distance to fester. And when it festers, we feel all sorts of things—frustration, isolation, insecurity, emptiness, insignificance. Sound familiar? And then we, so disoriented from God, spend all of our energy trying to manipulate everything so that we can regain some control and traction. Which leads to the last thing..

-He wants to offer us false solutions to our problems. He wants us to take a bite of the apple that will make us like God rather than yield to God himself. The problem is this: God is good, we are often not. But Satan convinces us that we are good enough, and that there are simpler and easier solutions than holy obedience & trust. Money, power, sex, fame. They, sadly, never materialize into much because their ability to be manipulated always leads to corruption.

So if we are going to consider the Kingdom and it’s power, we must start by realizing the Kingdom comes to offer us a counter-solution to the wicked tyrant. The battle, after all, is really about our hearts—our imaginations, our affections, our desires.

The Kingdom Comes: What King? (week 0/7)

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:28:22 -0500

Jesus steps into a weird predicament.

He shows up and, as Luke declares in the 4th chapter of his Gospel, his primary message was the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

The good news was (and indeed still is, despite the loose use of the word “Gospel” in our world today) that God was, in fact, King.

Now this is weird because…the Jewish people in Jesus’ day had loads of expectations built upon generations of leaders that promised one day, though things were hard now & God felt distant, that God would be King again. That he would decisively intervene and restore the nation of Israel (the people of God).

And as we look at strange stories like Pilate’s murder of the Galilean pilgrims in Luke 13 and Jesus’ corresponding and equally strange response, we see that the Jewish people had lots of methods that tried to “force” God to be King. Things like:

-Maybe God wants us to start the war and then he’ll show up and fight for/with us.
-Maybe God wants us to go separate from everyone and live in the woods and then he’ll find us desirable enough to come back for.
-Maybe we have too many dirty, filthy, poor “sinners” in our midst. Perhaps if we could shame them into pious behavior, THEN God will act decisively in our favor as our King.

That God would show up, in power, and do something amazing.

But none of these things tended to work. Instead they promoted national pride, violence, shame and exclusion, and perverted piety.

This is where the predicament occurs. Because Jesus shows, continually, that God will not be forced to be King by human means. In fact, he even offers something more incredulous and hard to swallow—that the Kingdom has already been at work—that God has, in a way, been King all along.

But their hearts refused to believe it.

In the work of Jesus, we see that he believes something incredulous is happening.

God’s reign is breaking in. Everywhere. And it looks nothing like you expected.

But the question we’re going to contemplate over the next 7 weeks is this:

What does it mean for God to be King?

Specifically, what does it mean for God to be King and to have power when our experience of the world declares something altogether different? What does it do to our faith when our experience of daily reality seems to suggest that God has lost control?

Note: This is the preface to a 7 week series called “The Kingdom Comes” and reflections the teaching from January 3rd, 2012.

Ten | The Rules of a People with a Beautiful Future

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:02:15 -0500

Wow, we still have a blog. Look at that. Since we’re here, I wanted to let everyone know what’s coming up at Pub Night Dallas.

In the 2nd book of the Bible, God rescued a large extended family, known at the time as the Hebrews (named after Abraham, a “wanderer”) or Israelites (named after Jacob, “wrestles with God”), from enslavement under the most powerful regime of the world in Egypt. And, in doing so, he gave them a destiny.

They would be a special nation, one that was rescued and lived as if they believed in the power of being thankful (for their rescue) and in the power of future rescue (of others). A people set apart, chosen to let the world know who the true Creator was, how he wanted us to live, and what he wanted us to do in the midst of a world that the preceding scriptures tell us haven’t exactly lived as if they knew God, what he was like or what he wanted.

How would they embrace this future? How would they actually “be” this kind of a nation?

What were they to be made up of?

Enter the Ten Commandments. At a mountain in the wilderness on their journey out of slavery, God comes to the leader of these now-liberated-but-homeless people, Moses, and gives him Ten Commandments to guide the people’s way. Far from being rules to see if the people could do the dance just because God said so, these were the guide rails to help the people become, well, the people.

These commandments became their stitches, those things that held them together.

It seems to be an innately human experience to shun rules. We don’t like to be told what to do. It seems restrictive, oppressive.

And, quite honestly, the Ten Commandments have been used this way. But this was not their intent.

They were intended to give a beautiful shape to the way this newly formed nation was to live and function. They were meant to provide freedom—you know, that thing that only comes when oppressive things are stripped away.

Come hear how these Ten rules were meant to give the people freedom and a future. Hopefully we’ll discover the freedom that Jesus gives us and the future we’re intended for.

Teaching Series | the Story of God

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:36:23 -0400

Our next teaching series is “the Story of God,” where we’ll spend 5 weeks taking an expansive look at the entire Bible.

I (Petey) have been teaching through a series on Sundays at HPPC called “How to Read the Bible” and this past week we talked about the 5 “acts” or parts of the Bible. Over the next 5 weeks at Pub Night, I want to spend time looking at each of those 5 parts.

Here’s a simple outline of what’s to come:

Week 1: Created & Creating Images of God // The Bible begins with God creating humans, made in his image, to live wholly satisfied lives—content with their God & Creator, their selves, other humans, and the creation around them.

Week 2: Fractured Images of God // Though we were created to live in full content & trust with God, humans instead chose to mis-trust God and trust in themselves. We took the whole image of God in us and fractured it, causing us to feel what’s known as “the effects of the fall.” We now feel uncomfortable in our own skin, unsure of God and if we can trust him, and in broken, competitive relationships with other humans and the world around us.

Week 3: Covenant Community // In a peculiar act, God chooses a barren man & woman to conceive children and be the start of a new people group who God gives the promise & blessing of leading humanity towards restoration and healing—from our fracture-images-of-God to whole-images-of-God. The Old Testament is the story of Israel, a nation God calls and creates from nothing to push humanity to imagine a better way of life, a way of life we were created for.

Week 4: The Perfect Image of Redemption // The Gospels reveal for us an amazing move on the part of God—though Israel fails and falls short, God ultimately keeps his promise and fulfills the deepest longings and hopes of the story of Israel: Jesus becomes the person and the community that solves the broken-images-of-God problem and gives humanity hope. He dies on behalf of our brokenness and pulls us into resurrection life that we may now walk in restored relationships with God, self, other humans and Creation.

Week 5: The Image Restored in All Things // The end of Scripture, in Revelation 21-22, promises a future that re-orients our present. By aligning ourselves with a vision of life that believes death is conquered by life (and love) and brokenness has no victory, we then start to see the possibilities of the inbreaking of that life all around us.

Breaking The Mold: Christ-like Formation v. Cultural Formation

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:27:27 -0400

Breaking The Mold: Christ-like Formation v. Cultural Formation:

I found this quote from the article particularly stirring & accurate: “Growing up in a culture like this, we quickly find that a sermon on Sunday, or a weekly youth group talk, can hardly give us the tools to renew our minds and be transformed into the image of our Creator.”

-pc

Christians should get creative, not criticize

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:30:33 -0400

Christians should get creative, not criticize

CHANGE OF VENUE (AGAIN)!

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:41:29 -0400

This week, for the Mavs game, we will be back at Jordan, Ben & Ty’s house for Pub Night.

Message will be at 7:30, game starts at 8:00. We’ll be getting pizza again.

teaching change for tonight

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:31:50 -0400

Tonight being in a different location and starting at a different time (7:30!), Lee has asked me to lead and talk more about what’s been on my heart lately. I’m looking forward to it!

We’ll resume our study on “introducing Luke” next week…

can we be like Mary & Zechariah?

Wed, 25 May 2011 10:56:16 -0400

At last night’s Pub Night, we looked at the second half of Luke chapter 1: which includes some narrative text and some poetry, but it collectively centers on Mary (the mother of Jesus) and Zechariah (the father of John the Baptist).

What strikes me most about this story and the way Luke introduces us to Jesus is that these are everyday, ordinary human beings—yet they are noted for amazing faith. They are actually so normal that most of society would have never noticed them, which is a lesson unto itself.

What Luke reveals in this text (which was admittedly initially unimpressive) is that this Jesus story is a story about everyday folk who are aligned with the dream of God for humanity. This alignment shapes everything about their lives: their hopes and dreams for the future, their posture of humility, their yearning for reconciliation and right relationships, and their incalculable joy because of their faith that God is who he says he is and will do what he promises he’ll do: set the world right.

A right world is a world where God’s peace, righteousness and justice are the true north. They define how we live, love, relate, and progress in life.

Mary and Zechariah were ordinary folks with extraordinary faith—they were so immersed in the story, dream, Kingdom, etc. of God that it became the lens through which the experienced life.

When God spoke they heard .
When God moved they grabbed on for dear life.
When God waited they stayed.
When God called they responded.

Not because they had some secret or were special—exactly the opposite. They realized they were nobody and the greatest hope for humanity and themselves was the dream of God: humans participating in God’s character and identity—peeling back the effects of sin and living in light of a world where God reigns.

Are you so in tune with God that his dream is becoming your dream?

Read the songs/prophecies in Luke 1 again and think about ordinary people who shared an ancient dream. What do you learn about their faith and their dream?

Why do we serve?

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:46:35 -0400

Hey friends- Every week I ask each of you to consider the ways Pub Night can push you in your faith. Serving is an area that comes to my mind…

One thing our group is continually doing better with is serving the community. Read the quoted text below and ask yourself where you can apply your time and skills. Then, let me know what you would like to see Pub Night offer as the next service project.

“If you’d like a more joyful life, start serving in the ways God has gifted you to serve, and cut out all the duty and obligation and pride crap. If you are teaching Sunday school out of a sense of obligation, stop. Literally stop as soon as you can. Instead, find something that gets you fired up. Who knows what that something is—maybe it’s plumbing or carpentry work, maybe it’s counseling executives, maybe it’s walking people’s dogs or planting a community garden. Who knows, but serve in a way God has wired you to serve.”

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/mission/features/25634-are-you-motivated-by-good-or-guilt

Blog Challenge, Week 3: Luke 1:39-80

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:24:00 -0400

This week’s Lukan text is 1:39-80. Read it, pray it, think through it.

What is Luke introducing about Jesus?

Click “submit” and write a paragraph of your thoughts..

Blog Challenge, Week 2 (Luke 1:26-80)

Thu, 05 May 2011 11:57:22 -0400

Take some time this week and read the rest of Luke 1 (we’ve already talked about the first 25 verses).

Answer this question:

How is Luke introducing us to Jesus?

In other words, what is Luke setting us up to understand about Jesus that will help us want to follow him?

Blog your response by hitting “submit” on the lefthand side of the blog.

Introducing Jesus with Luke 1:5-25

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:33:11 -0400

This week, read Luke 1:5-25 several times. Ask yourself what Luke is trying to reveal to his audience about Jesus.

When something strikes you, write about it!

Click “Submit” on the left side of the blog post and write about what stands out to you from this particular passage. Remember to add your name to your thoughts!

Blog Challenge Response, Week 1

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:08:22 -0400

The first 4 chapters of Luke remind us that God does the impossible and the improbable on a regular basis. Whether Luke is writing about women past their birthing years giving birth, the Virgin Mary giving birth, or a human going 40 days without food we see constant struggles between human and God. As humans we constantly doubt the things that we claim to know about God, His directives, and even the very things that we have perceived faith about. We are in a constant state of temptation and must become more reliant upon prayer.

-Ben Wilson

Happy Easter everyone!!! Just wanted to say I love you all and hope your Easter has been an amazing...

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:00:38 -0400

Happy Easter everyone!!! Just wanted to say I love you all and hope your Easter has been an amazing time to reflect on our risen Lord and Saviour and victorious King! It has been an amazing week for me leading up to Easter of just understanding more of the character of God and coming to a real realization of how much God really loves me! I encourage all of you to really go and discover more of God’s character! And my prayer is that as you do that you will come to your own realization of how Great our GOd is and how much he loves you!

He is Risen!

Much love from Ireland,

Caroline

"what to know when your 25"

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:00:36 -0400

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/features/22864-what-to-know-when-youre-25ish